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Japan (Space Race Didn't End)
Japan (Japanese: 日本 Nippon ɲip̚poɴ or Nihon ɲihoɴ; formally 日本国'' Nippon-koku'' or Nihon-koku, meaning "State of Japan") is a sovereign island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian mainland, and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan (Republic of China) in the southwest. The kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin". 日 can be read as ni and means sun, while 本 can be read as hon, or pon and means origin. Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet "Land of the Rising Sun" in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and often are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions; Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one. Japan has the world's sixth-largest population, with over 252 million people as of 2021. Japanese people make up 98.5% of Japan's total population. Honshū's Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the de facto capital city of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world by population, with over 56.6 million residents. Approximately 15 million people live in the city of Tokyo alone, making it by far the largest city in Japan. Other major metropolitan areas includes the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe Metropolitan Area with over 33.3 million, Chūkyō Metropolitan Area with 25 million and Fukuoka–Kitakyushu Metropolitan Area with 10 million residents. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, particularly from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, which was ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma, and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947 during the occupation by the SCAP, Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet. Following the end of World War II and the early Cold War, Japan recovered rapidly and heavily industralized into a major economic and industrial power. From the 1950s and well into the 1990s, Japan witnessed rapid growth rates in an period known as the Japanese economic miracle. It emerged from the ruins left after World War II as a highly and technologically advanced economic, industrial and technological superpower. Japan became a worldwide leader in telecommunications and information technology (IT), which would play a key role in the ongoing Space Race between the two recognized global superpowers, United States and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union. Due to the China War and growing tensions between South China and North China, Japan has increased its military budget and built a very advanced and powerful navy and air force. By 1991, Japan had become the world's third largest national economy after Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union and United States, with a GDP of $5.6 trillion and was recognized as the world's third global superpower. It surpassed the $10-trillion mark five years later in 1996, and by 2000 the Japanese GDP was $15.6 trillion, tied with Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union as the world's fastest-growing major economy. As predicted in the early 1980s, Japan surpassed the United States as the world's second largest national economy. Today, Japan is the largest national economy in Asia and the world's second largest national economy. The Japanese economy surpassed the $25-trillion mark in 2017 and is projected to surpass the $30-trillion mark by 2021. It is by far one of the wealthiest sovereign states in the world by per capita income with over $101,000. In 1987, Japan entered the Space Race for the first time when it launched its first spaceship from a new space launch facility straight to the moon in a surprising demonstration of technological ability. In 1993, Japan and the United States became the only two countries to land on Mercury in hope of further studying the planet's core for rare earths which are needed in advanced electronics. It was followed by another joint U.S.-Japanese mission in 1998 to find rare earths on an asteroid, which were needed for advanced electronics. In the early 2010s, Japan landed and established a base on Rhea, the second largest moon circling Saturn. The Imperial Japanese Army, which consists of the Ground Forces, Navy, Aerospace Forces and the Weapons of Mass Destruction Forces, together form the third largest military force in the world after the Soviet Armed Forces and the United States Armed Forces. Its military expenditure in 2018 was $560 billion, which was the world's third highest military expenditure after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union and the United States, and by far the highest military expenditure in Asia. The Imperial Japanese Navy is the largest navy in Asia, and operates the third largest fleet of modern aircraft carriers with six very heavy aircraft carriers, and the Imperial Japanese Army Aerospace Forces is the world's fourth largest air force with more than 2,500 aircraft. Japan is widely recognized as a global superpower, along with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union and the United States. Category:Japan (Space Race Didn't End) Category:Nations (Space Race Didn't End) Category:Space Race Didn't End